The B2B sales function is a critical customer relationship touch that begins before a company actually become a customer. A knowledgeable sales process with highly relevant interactions is a great first impression and sets the stage for a valuable, long-term relationship. In VentureBeat, distinguished Gartner analyst, Whit Andrews, identified sales as one place in the customer relationship cycle where businesses should seriously consider investing in AI. Here’s why:

Context matters when answering common sales questions

Andrews believes now that businesses understand what AI is, it’s time for them to focus on how they can best use it. He indicates that AI is particularly effective for “commonly asked questions whose answers vary depending on the context.”

In B2B sales, some of these common questions are:

“Who are the best prospects for my product?”

“Are there more companies who are similar to this one I just closed?

The ‘best’ answer is very much dependent upon the specific context of both your company’s product offering as well the unique qualifiers of each potential target account. Too many organizations try to answer these common “who” questions with basic firmographics and discover that it’s just not effective. In the end, their sales teams waste too much time with the wrong accounts. It is the nuanced, specific insights and signals about each company which can truly qualify and differentiate the good prospects for your product from the not-so-good.

High-quality, credible data is essential for AI

Andrews also counseled that organizations need to lay the groundwork for AI, stating that “high-quality data is essential” and there needs to be a large volume of parameters all with high consistency, or there will be insurmountable problems.

This is why our EverString AI platform for B2B marketing and sales is powered by our own fully automated data platform comprising the most comprehensive, clean database of company data found anywhere. We then apply advanced data science to this current and comprehensive database to add tens of millions more proprietary, AI-derived signals and insights to each company profile. Every EverString model and audience is built upon this complete, clean, comprehensive, in-depth data platform.

See the value before you buy

Andrews advises businesses to be “reasonable” and understand what’s “possible” when determining the value in AI solutions. He also said that vendors must be able to provide “examples of similar projects” during these evaluations. We couldn’t agree more strongly. That’s why we share case studies at everstring.com/customers and customer spotlights on our blog.